08:40am   Back in front of my charts for a limited time this morning after a long-weekend break although we are off on a last-minute holiday tonight so I will not be trading full-time again until next Tuesday on day trading uk. Any trades I take this morning will be detailed below in my Trading Diary. I will also be sending out today’s Trading-Idea soon to subscribers.

Market Update:

U.S. markets climbed yesterday after experiencing their worst weekly performance for over two years. The Dow Jones rose by over 400 points at the close last night (+1.70%) and both the Nasdaq and S&P-500 ended the session up over 1.4%.  Under performing stocks from last week such as Apple, Bank Of America and Amazon all rose well through Monday’s session which helped raise sentiment although all the U.S. indices are looking fairly overbought in futures trading this morning so we may see selective declines coming up.  Most traders I have spoken to on Wall Street are still seeing this as a minor correction rather than the start of a bear market although this “readjustment” has a while to go yet according to some large fund managers.

The overnight Asian trading session ended largely ahead by the close although trading volumes were lower than usual in China ahead of their new year celebrations at the end of the week. The Shanghai Composite was up by 1%, the Hang Seng finished at +1.54% and the Australian ASX-200 closed at +0.6. The only lage lose of the session was the Japanese Nikkei-225 index which finished down by 0.66% after a long weekend holiday.

Oil prices are stabilising slightly this morning after declining for four straight sessions in a row as global stock markets rise.  There is still the perception that U.S. oil stocks are too high for this time of year and the private American Petroleum Institute will release their stock level estimates later today, followed by the official U.S. Energy Information Administration announcement tomorrow. Brent Crude fell 51 cents to $62.63 by last night’s close and although it has traded higher during the Asian session the price is down to $62.57 at the moment and look to be heading for the minor support at $61.00.

Gold is looking fairly bullish as European indices get off to a shaky start this morning, it rose by $8.70 yesterday to close at $1323.10 last night and is $1328.85 at the moment and broken above its 20-day moving average which is an optimistic sign.

Trading Diary:

09:35am   Just taken a ‘short’ position on my 15-min S&P-500 chart, more details to follow.

09:45am   The above trade is a Master-The-Trend Strategy-A set-up with a higher than usual 40 pip stop loss.

10:10am    Nothing else is jumping out at me on my collection of favourite charts so I am off for a cycle ride with some trader friends.

11:40am    I am now out of my S&P position, it has just hit its first target of 40 pips and as I am off after lunchtime I thought I would close the trade now rather than letting it run over the U.S. trading session opening period.